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About The Author

Matt McGee is the Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. After leaving traditional media in the mid-1990s, he began developing and marketing websites and continued to provide consulting services for more than 15 years. His SEO and social media clients ranged from mom-and-pop small businesses to one of the Top 5 online retailers. Matt is a longtime speaker at marketing events around the U.S., including keynote and panelist roles. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt's disclosures on his personal blog.

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Congrats to Matt Cutts and team for rolling this update out the night 700+ SEOs hit Seattle for Mozcon. Well played, Mr. Cutts.

http://www.twitter.com/JeremyCMorgan Jeremy Morgan

Is this for real? Wow. Thing is, the best SEOs at Mozcon are going to be happy about this.

http://twitter.com/igl00FTW igl00

i was telling people theres something going out since few days when i was noticing odd changes but nobody believed.

Donna Fontenot

It’s the people who have been (im)patiently waiting for a penguin update that are going to be frustrated by this. I’m going to get tons of messages (again) asking if I know when Penguin will run again. No. No, I do not know.

Alan

Is this Google firing a shot across the bow of the SEO ship?

Durant Imboden

If we’re up to 3.9 now, does that mean a significant shakeup will be coming in another month or so? A 4.0 release should be more than incremental, shouldn’t it?

http://www.davidmcohen.com/ David Cohen

In theory, yes, so-called great SEOs won’t sweat it. But when does Google ever really follow the theory? Google’s got a track record of hitting sites that may not have necessarily been hit-worthy. Google’s no stranger to friendly-fire casualties.

http://www.twitter.com/JeremyCMorgan Jeremy Morgan

Yeah, I agree. Unfortunately there will be some casualties, but I think for the most part people will be ok if they follow the guidelines and stop trying to outsmart Google.

http://www.twitter.com/JeremyCMorgan Jeremy Morgan

I think it’s more like their way of crashing the party and becoming the hot topic. Google really wants websites to follow their rules, it’s in their own best interest. It just doesn’t always work out so great for the webmaster.

http://www.facebook.com/pinton Max Pinton

Not necessarily. The next incremental release could be 3.10.

http://searchengineland.com/ Danny Sullivan

Google doesn’t number these. We do. Unless Google says the next update is a major change, we’re kind of out of point numbers. We’d probably call it 3.91 or something. Saying 3.10 would be confusing with Panda 3.1. We need more decimals!

How about a Penguin refresh Update again? What up with all the Panda’s?

http://www.facebook.com/pinton Max Pinton

.9 -> .10 (and so on) is very standard in software development these days. It’s not meant to be a decimal representation but just (typically) three numbers (major version, minor version, bugfix) separated by periods. So seeing something like “version 2.14.26″ is commonplace.

But I agree, if Google isn’t setting these numbers, they have no relationship to Google’s development cycle.

http://www.twitter.com/JeremyCMorgan Jeremy Morgan

Agreed, it seems that Google doesn’t have a problem with SEO as long as you’re providing quality content that’s represented accurately.

Sachin Saroj

I want to know that is there synonyms are also effected with Google’s Panda???

http://www.facebook.com/sheilacruzeforcontentaxis Sheila Cruze

@Danny, I have a question! If we have same company “about us” and “description” on various Social Media Channels, Do you think this will be treated as spam or copied content by Google. And if it is so what should we do then?

http://twitter.com/ContentAxis Content Axis

Wish this time only culprits are being punished and those publishers who are fair and clean on their SEO works should be spared.

http://www.facebook.com/joseprincely Jose Princely

There will be no 3.10 for Sure. Huge Impact going to be in next Panda. 4.0

rahul sharma

Put in this keyword in Google.co.in “property registration services noida” and you will see the disaster Google algorithm is doing . All 10 organic results from one website. Just check it once! How can one be sure about Google really giving right results .

http://www.facebook.com/seo.jaipur Seo Jaipur

Rahul it totally Google Host Cording

http://twitter.com/Guide_Please Dilawer

Hi, Matt McGee
Thanks buddy for sharing this info, I got shocked when I read about the Panda update will affect about one percent of search results??? Got Damaged my nephew website is full of copy content It might be possible he also will lost!

http://twitter.com/SorcimTech SorcimTechnologies

i noticed 60% increase in web traffic on July 21 when compared to the average daily traffic from july 1 to july 20. But after 21st July traffic went back to normal!

Seomagic

Interesting I have been noticing lately the rankings have been fluctuating dramatically. When will the next Penguin update roll out I wonder…

http://twitter.com/SeoKungFu Boris Krumov

RUN FOR THE HILLS ! ! !

http://mobilephones.pk/ DrRoot

This is a data refresh, not algorithm update, algorithm is same for now!

http://mobilephones.pk/ DrRoot

I don’t think it will be any time soon, a lot of links i removed from some of sites a month ago can still be seen in Google cache, which makes me think i am certainly not alone, its better to wait and see once Google has fresh data.

http://twitter.com/MariyaJames Mariya James

Well there is no end of Panda and its effects. Just waiting for the day I will say Yuppppppppiii…

http://twitter.com/seominister Ashish Chauhan

Let’s see, my fingers are crossed for all my website. I have followed all Google guidelines this time, hoping for improvement in ranking.

http://www.home-ec101.com/ Heather Solos

Looking good here, referral traffic seems consistent. It’s been on a monthly 10% rise pretty much since the original update.

http://twitter.com/MtAdamsADesign Aranzamendez Design

Wow! the number 1 site is also the number 2-9! I can;t believe this and the site has no links or zero PR as well but still rank on high! What a waste!

http://twitter.com/MtAdamsADesign Aranzamendez Design

I’m so happy for this update because the ranking of our website goes up to number 6 position from number 9 yesterday.. Thanks Matt! I hope after this update, our ranking will be consistent now..

Ashley Wilson

Google always comes up with something or another to track spammer.

http://www.eyes4tech.com/ Arsie

I am going to monitor my websites for the next few days. Thanks for the info.

http://twitter.com/Chenzoni Vincenzo Desroches

Scary thing is, I am seeing newer less than 3 months old sites being indexed and given rankings as of this morning.

I do not like seeing rankings that fast.

Maybe the new panda is ninja quick

Durant Imboden

Thanks for the clarification. Just out of curiosity, how do you decide what’s “dot {n}” update and what’s an “[n] dot” update? By whether Google says it’s an algorithm change or a data refresh? Or maybe by whether Google says it will affect a whole lot of search results or just a few search results?

HISWebMarketing

I’m predicting that a Penguin refresh happens soon! The initial Penguin algo change was sandwiched in between two Panda refreshes. It’s almost as if Google wants to confuse people to the point where they say, “I don’t know why I was penalized but I better start making good content and stop producing spammy links!”

http://xeeme.com/MikeMiguel/ Luis Miguel

I agree… Penguim update next week, begin August… I bet on that

http://www.facebook.com/iMikeDoherty Mike Doherty

Should be no issues if current SEO strategies are within Google’s guidelines. I have a love/hate relationship for Google’s control, but I do love the idea of constant improvement and striving to make better, more relevant search results. My company (www.imiassociates.com) is doing a webinar on the Penguin and Panda updates this Friday for anyone looking for help/clarity on the topic. Registration Forms: http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=E050DF858548 http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=E050DF85864C

http://twitter.com/TravelCenter_UK Travel Center UK

Oh!! When I was waiting for the PR update by Google suddenly this happened.. am sure this is going to kill SEO, try a different job folks. No more SEO

Manx Voter

Appears to be a mega problem with property sites at the moment where sheer size of a vendor is severely punishing quality niches sites

http://twitter.com/TheLifeQuoters lifequoter

This comes like a shock to everyone. I should begin the countdown and wait to see how this update will affect my sites :( And SEOs are definitely not going to celebrate this, it will anyway sweat them out until they find out what actually happened. Panda updates being rolled out one after another has devastated the foundation of SEO market and forced them to relay it again. Still waiting to see the new dawn of SEO principles with eyes set on Google. Hoping for the best! Finger crossed :P

Paul Ryan

Why are you getting tired Google updates? They aren’t the problem; your clients are. You should be tired of clients who used such methods. Don’t be under the illusion they aren’t paying for some else for webspam while you are doing “white hat ethical SEO”.

Durant Imboden

The simplest step Google could take toward encouraging high-quality content–and removing clutter from its SERPs–would be to filter out stubs (such as “Write a review” pages on some of the big tech sites and crowdsourced travel sites) or, better yet, penalize the sites that spew out worthless pages automatically for every conceivable product name or keyphrase. Those megasites would quickly learn to “noindex” their stub pages until the pages actually had some content on them.

http://twitter.com/DonsJuiceFast Jersey Don

{slow clap}

http://surebetfinder.info/ Surebetter

Yeah, I also noticed changes. Basically it’s site with little to no linkbuilding but decent content — they went up for main kws and longtails.

http://surebetfinder.info/ Surebetter

I wish that “SEO” that can be killed by this was actually killed. Enough wannabes mocking the industry.

http://pinoyseoservices.blogspot.in/ Dom Casas

I’m wondering what’s new in Panda 3.9… It seems like Most webmasters will be very busy again…

http://surebetfinder.info/ Surebetter

I’m calling for the Anteater update by SEOs: that would mean not viewing Google SERPs as the ultimate goal and diversifying traffic sources. But that would mean being smart, right, update-sufferers?